Inquiry

On August 1st, we have finished grade 4 and now moving on to grade 5! This blog post is a little bit late because we had to do a lot of things. Now we are on our next unit. This blog post, I am going to talk about a math game that I played online as an extra.

We played this game called Deep Sea Dive on the website called Illuminations. It’s a game where you can choose which grid you have. They have a 16 bubble grid and a 9 it says the target number on the top of the screen., and then you have to match the number so then it adds up to the target number.

I played the game a couple of times and I won a lot of them. Once you won like 4 times, the game gets harder and it can add in decimals and maybe even negative numbers!

The things I learned from this is how to add decimals. It was also very entertaining. Once I got to the decimals, I lost quite a bit. First when I tried it I kept guessing. Sometimes I won and sometimes I didn’t. I mostly didn’t. If you want to see the link, click HERE!

Before this, we had to do a summative test of UOI. This summative was about the first unit. It was about what we needed our classroom community to look like. By that, it meant that we needed to talk about what we wanted everyone to act, or what we actually wanted our classroom community to look like (Arranging tables and changing the design).

I am fast at typing, so I finished it earlier than some people. We also had this paper to correct our work and correct our mistakes. I added a few more ideas because the minimum of paragraphs were at least like 7-11 paragraphs.

This was a summative task, which means we can’t help other people. I helped someone a little bit but then I didn’t know.

I think I was successful with my writing piece. Maybe to improve it, I can add more details. In case you want to read it yourself, just go HERE!

I felt very happy since the start of the year. The only thing is that people kept talking when I was trying to focus.

On March 21st, I watched a video on BrainPop. The video was about extinction. I liked this one and decided to create a mind map about it. It was really cool.

Extinction is when an entire species of animals die. Species are any group of organisms that share enough common traits to breed together. There are more than 1 billion extinct species! Some examples of animals that are extinct; Sabre tooth tiger, dodo bird and dinosaurs are all extinct! And when a species die, it can affect the whole ecosystem.

The way the dinosaurs were extinct was by mass extinction. It is when a large percentage of species on earth die in a short period of time. It happens because sudden environmental factors like it suddenly becomes really cold. Dinosaurs do not live in cold places so they die very easily.

Evolutionary pressure is when one species change into many generations. There’s also a theory of evolution; All living things are competing for food, water and space, and because of that, they are becoming extinct! For example, if a fish is trying to get food and have more space, then a shark suddenly wants it, they’ll eat the fish to get even more space for themselves. If it keeps on happening, species will become extinct quicker.

Extinction can also happen by human activities like farming, forestry, industry and commercial fishing. They all put lots of pressure on the environment. Humans also depend a lot on food, clothing and shelter. They kill the animals and cut the trees for all of those. That is another way animals can become extinct. I learned a lot about extinction. I am looking forward to creating another one :D.

On March 16th, I used BrainPop to create a mind map about oceans. I found out way more than the Land Biomes one I did. The video was called Underwater World. I chose this topic because I did not know much about what is in the oceans.

First, I found out that oceans are the largest ecosystems in the world. Over 70% of earth’s surface is covered with water, and all of the oceans connect so that animals can move between them. The Depths of oceans is so dark, no plants can grow, and the fish down there have light emitting abilities.

After that, I learned that there are a lot of different habitats underwater. There are sandy plains, mountains, coral reefs, deep canyons, and open water. Another one is called the Pelagic habitat. They are divided in 3 zones: Bathyal zone, Abyssal zone and Euphotic zone. The Bathyal zone have just a little bit of light. In the Abyssal zone, there is no sunlight and it can go down to 6,000m! The pressure there can turn you into a smooth paste, but there are still animals living in the Abyssal zone! The Euphotic zone is from the surface down to 100m, and they get enough sunlight that tiny plankton live there. They need just about every food chain in the ocean!

There is also a Benthic habitat. Scientists call it the ocean floor. It covers the coral reef to continental shelves to underwater mountains ranges to deep ocean trenches. One of the deepest trench in the world is the Marianas in the Pacifics. It’s over 11,000m deep and you can loose the world’s tallest inside of it!

Another habitat is the coral reef. The coral reef can look like a rock, but it is actually made of hard skeleton of small animals. The skeleton is from a coral polyp. Since the coral reef is close to the surface, sunlight penetrates the water.All of those habitats support different types of sea life. If you combine all of those habitats together, there will be more than 21,000 species living in the water! I really enjoyed watching the video and creating the mind map. It was very fun.

On March 14th, we made a map about biomes. We used BrainPop to watch a video about it and created a mind map. On this mind map, I knew more than the other mind maps I’ve created.

Biomes are a system of plants, animals and land, and they all have similar ecosystems. Factors like temperature, rainfall and attitude all decide what plant and animal life a biome can support. I also learned that if you move an animal out of their biome, there is a high chance of them dying. For example: If you move a polar bear out to a Desert, it will most likely die because it’s too hot. The same happens with plants.

I learned about the different biomes. There are much more than I expected. One biome is a Rainforest, it can reach over 150 cm of rainfall each year, and they’re humid and hot. Another biome is a Temperate Forest. That is where Oak and Maple Trees grow, and the soil is very fertile. I learned about another biome called Taiga. They have cool summers and cold winters. There is also Grasslands or Savanna. There are NOT a lot of trees but lots of grassland. They have hot rainy seasons and cold dry seasons. The last one was the Desert, it’s hot during the day and cold during the night.

There was one biome I missed. It was the tundra. I couldn’t put them anywhere because there is no more space. I learned a lot from BrainPop, and enjoyed creating the mind map.